The Monument of Paikuli. The activities of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Iraqi Kurdistan, past and present
Since 2006 a team of Italian archaeologists and epigraphists, led by Prof. Carlo G. Cereti
(Sapienza University of Rome) surveyed and studied the commemorative monument erected by
the Sasanian king Narseh (293 302 CE) next to a strategic pass of the Qaradagh Range
(Sulaimaniyah Province). Through the data collected from the site and the Paikuli Collection
held at the Slemani Museum, many innovative results have been achieved in the last decade.
More specifically, the study of the bilingual inscription (Middle Persian and Parthian) and the
massive sculptures of the king, once adorning the monument, provided significant improvement
of the scholarly debate on the early Sasanian kingship. The ongoing activities include the
documentation of all the blocks originally constituting the outer coating of the monument and
now scattered on the slopes of the hill. The new set of archaeological data will soon shed light
on different matters related to the still problematic feature of the monument structure structure